Blackbaud

E-mail is a great tool for engaging constituents, fundraising from donors and so much more. Here are five proven tips for getting visitors to subscribe to your e-mail list.

Donors are making bigger online gifts to charity this month than they did last year at this time, but they are making fewer gifts, according to data provided by Network for Good, a giving site that provided information on online contributions to 8,700 charities. Last week, the average online gift made through Network for Good was $122.55, up from $113.57 for the same week in 2011. The average gift size rose by a similar percentage in the previous week.

Adcieo, the digital division of LW Robbins, announced the addition of two senior staff to its management team, with the appointment of Debbie Snyder as vice president of sales and marketing, and Thalia Driessen as creative director.

Here are five best practices for a successful peer-to-peer fundraising program and tips on how they can be integrated into your campaigns.

The Blackbaud Index of Charitable Giving, a fundraising index that reports giving trends of 2,984 U.S.-based nonprofits representing $7.8 billion in yearly giving on a monthly basis, reported that charitable giving decreased 3.8 percent for the three months ending October 2012 compared to the same period in 2011. The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving, based on actual revenue data from 1,961 nonprofits representing $371 million in yearly online giving, reported that online giving rose 1.1 percent for the same period in 2012 compared to 2011.

In a recent survey of more than 1,000 U.S.-based VolunteerSpot members conducted by Blackbaud and VolunteerSpot, 96 percent of the survey respondents said they plan to donate to charity this holiday season. However, that number is tempered with 46 percent of the respondents that plan to donate to charity this holiday saying they will either give to fewer charities or give less to the same number of charities as last year. Thirty-nine percent plan to give the same amount as last year, while 13 percent plan to give more.

#GivingTuesday may well become a new holiday tradition, as donors generously responded to charities' pleas to take time off from shopping days like Cyber Monday and Black Friday to give and volunteer. The amount of online donations processed by Blackbaud, a processor of online gifts, shot up 53 percent to $10 million on Tuesday, compared with the same day last year.

First, there was the post-Thanksgiving sales spectacle Black Friday and then the online version, Cyber Monday. Now, charitable groups want to start a new holiday tradition — it's called Giving Tuesday and the first one is tomorrow. The idea is to get people excited about giving in the same way they might get excited about buying a big-screen TV at a bargain price.

Charity Dynamics and NTEN delivered key findings from the organizations' Nonprofit Donor Engagement Benchmark Study, a first-of-its-kind survey and report designed to help better understand individuals' giving behavior, engagement preferences and motivations that drive their support for charitable organizations and causes. The joint Charity Dynamics/NTEN donor-focused study gathered feedback from consumers spanning a wide range of giving levels ($25 – $5,000) who donated to a nonprofit in the past 12 months.

A report released by Blackbaud found that nonprofits could potentially improve their fundraising returns by better aligning with donors’ giving preferences and increasing transparency. The new report, Donor Perspectives: An investigation into what drives your donors to give, is based on survey results from more than 4,000 donors in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

The report provides a view of the nonprofit sector from the donor perspective and compares results from Blackbaud’s recently released 2012 State of the Nonprofit Industry report (SONI), which gauged levels of nonprofit optimism and explored successful management strategies.